Spawn
Itook a spot up about a mile south of Hailey’s apartment complex. I had with me a half-dozen members and prospects, along with Brock.
To the north, also about a mile away from Hailey’s apartment, Satan, Lane, and Cole, along with other Patriots, waited for their cue to go. On a three-way call with us was Mason. We had our ears pinned to our phones when we stopped.
“It’s the damndest fucking thing,” Mason said. “He’s not doing anything to them. It looks like he’s telling a fucking story.”
“But he seems to know as soon as we move. He’s taunting us with this shit,” Satan said.
“Which means we’re not going to catch him this round,” I said begrudgingly.
In our anger and our ride out, we’d hoped that King had just laid a massive trap on himself. Let us rescue the girls, kill Satan in one fell swoop, easy enough. But by the time I’d gotten here and had the chance to let the anger subside in favor of rational thinking, I knew the fucking truth.
King was too damn smart to die like that. He wasn’t an old man, but he was probably in his fifties by now. He didn’t get this far by being a fucking idiot.
But why had he gone to the effort of making this happen?
I had two guesses. One was that he knew the best means of communicating to us, somehow, was through the girls, and he was trying to mindfuck them—if not actually fuck them. The second was that he knew we’d get caught up in the moment and swept up into a trap.
The latter seemed most likely.
But I suspected that he didn’t anticipate that we were coming in for a pincer attack, hitting them from both sides. They might have withstood a one-sided attack, but King would be in serious trouble if we pinched them in.
“We can still make his balls shrink with terror,” Satan said. “I see no fucking reason to wait. Does anyone have a reason to object?”
“No.”
“Mason? Anything happening?”
“No,” he said. He paused for a second. “Go give him hell. Fuck him up, Spawn.”
No, Mason would not apologize for what he’d done. I would not apologize for what I’d done. But that was as close as we’d get to the two of us acknowledging each other, and it was damn well good enough for the situation.
“Let’s fucking go!”
We put our phones down, revved our engines to life, and charged straight ahead. I didn’t know exactly what lay ahead, but I knew we had to rescue Melissa, and we might get to kill King. One of those was nice. The other was essential.
I closed my eyes for a moment and thought of her. I thought of how, just only hours before, I’d told her she only had one chance to do it right. I had done it to make sure I didn’t go through the bullshit of last time again.
But why I had said that when I knew full well what I wanted…well, I knew.
It was fucking painful the way last time ended. One of the worst things I’d ever gone through, even if I wouldn’t admit it out loud.
But when times were good, they were the absolute fucking best they’d ever been in my life. No one and nothing had given me the deep satisfaction that being around Melissa had. I’d let the fear of heartache and pain detract from that, and as I opened my eyes, I knew the truth.
If I rescued Melissa—no,whenI rescued Melissa—she was going to be mine forever. We might have some bullshit things to figure out, but that wasn’t going to be something that would stop us.
We would last forever. I would not give a damn about fear. I would only give a damn about making us work.
“For you, baby,” I said, quietly enough no one could hear it over the roar of the motorcycle.
And then, just like that, I flipped back into sergeant-at-arms mode. It was time to kill.
The first King’s Men appeared when he peered around a corner at the sound of our bikes approaching. I took aim and fired. I missed, but it had the necessary effect. We weren’t trying to be subtle. We wanted to overwhelm and surprise.
The only negative side effect would be that the entirety of the complex would turn into a war zone. We’d probably get actual deserved bad press, but that was a consequence that we’d long ago stopped worrying about. If the Phoenix Police Department wanted to get involved, we’d handle it then. But the only people getting murdered would be King’s Men.
Three King’s Men took positions on a railing. Between me, Brock, and our members, we managed to kill one and wound another. On the other side, we could hear gunshots ringing out.
